An Ode to Inactivity
These are a Few of My Favorite Slothful Things
Staying on the Path
Zion-I tours in support of their latest underground
Jurassic Jive
Imagine you own a past-its-prime alligator attraction on I-4 near Plant City. Now imagine that a family from Sweden buys the property with the intention of turning it into a modest tourist stop called Dinosaur World. You'd at least chuckle, wouldn't you? But not before you signed the papers. Well, it looks as if the…
Dream Lovers
Two romantic fantasies, no heart
Gimme That!
Greed gone wild
Clean Up Your Act
Say the words "Eastern medicine" and a lot of halfwits conjure images of heady incense and potions made from the innards of small, defenseless animals. Peasants. It's 2003, yo, and if you haven't been the recipient of some beneficial Eastern remedy, chances are you know someone who has. In the medical world, people are flocking…
The Big List
The Planet Guide to Summer Happenings
Utopia Dreamin’
Koreshan State Historic Site in Estero, located slightly south of Fort Myers, marries nature and history. Koreshan Park, an erstwhile utopian community, is a testament to Cyrus Teed's ingenuity and bizarre vision of the universe. Teed, who used the biblical name Koresh, organized a religion based on very unpopular ideas. His dogmas stemmed from what…
Letters
See No Evil This is scary. I had heard a story of a woman in Tampa who tried to get Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine at her local Hollywood Video store. She was told it wasn't available because it was being "held back" because of its content. Bowling for Columbine, for those who don't know,…
Outtakes
Short reviews of movies playing throughout the Tampa Bay area.
Caught on Tape
No, we're not suggesting that you search your neighborhood Blockbuster for hard-to-find movies (although if someone would like to divulge a location with a copy of Cannonball Run, it would be most appreciated). But if you're looking for a way to engage in some healthy and humorous competition with a bunch of friends, and a…
Save the World’s Fastest Couch Potato
In high school, my friends and I would occasionally hang out at the dog track for its whiff of action, of lives and money squandered. Droopy-face seniors and dopey guys in blazers rooted sullenly for dogs with funky names like Dapper Suzy and Hiawatha Rosa. The order of each race's winners was a mystery, and…
Crazy About The Q
Enjoy some turf with your surf on Memorial Day
Sinful Scarf-O-Rama
Gluttony at the buffet
Spins
Tomorrow Come Today BOYSETSFIRE Wind-Up When socially conscious Delaware hardcore outfit Boysetsfire left cred-heavy Victory Records for Creed-heavy major label Wind-Up, their longtime fans cringed and waited. For quite awhile, it turned out, because Wind-Up re-released their last LP, After the Eulogy — which had been out less than a year, anyway — and worked…
Upcoming Releases
The following releases will be in stores on Tuesday, May 20
Tee Time
Water parks aren't the only way to beat the summer heat. Hell, who needs water at all? What you need is something to take your mind off the temperature: long lays of green adorned with random holes; pirate ships docked in mid-air next to Day-Glo windmills; a 6-foot clown head that spits colored balls at…
A Poke in the Ego
There's nothing practical about practical jokes. You're trying to humiliate a buddy. You're a plotting, cruel, horrible — yeah, I can't wait to see the look on their face either. Most practical jokes are cliché: frozen underwear, putting shaving cream in someone's hand and then dangling a string on their nose. And now there are…
Take this Job and…
In the coming months, many of us will endure the standard Florida ritual of going from air-conditioned home to air-conditioned car to air-conditioned office. It's the office part that's the toughest partly because most offices are artificially climate-controlled year-round and partly because … you're at fucking work. Why not break the doldrums by coming up…
The Big Chill
Yes, we know, it's hot. Africa hot. How long have you lived here, anyway? When the water park, the pool and even the ocean get too warm to refresh, there's still H2O brisk enough to do the trick at Ginnie Springs, as long as you've got access to an air-conditioned vehicle that'll make the long…
Bottoms up
Two words: free beer. After paying a steep $51.95 for admission to Tampa's largest theme park, you'll find that any free deal is a welcome relief. And if the freebie comes in the form of a brewed yeast beverage, so much the better. When the monkey house (sorry, Myombe Reserve) and the endless, snaking ride…
Looking for Aunt Bea and Opie
Don't you hate it when some high-fallutin' city slicker from New York or somewhere says some stupid shit like, "I love small towns like St. Petersburg"? St. Petersburg is not a small town! Lenoir City, Tenn., is a small town. Pottsville, Pa., is a small town. Sloatsburg, N.Y., and Burk Burnett, Texas, and Berryville, Va.,…
Thinkin’ Inside the Box
When my friend Craig told me he had the entire first three seasons of my favorite guilty pleasure show — Buffy the Vampire Slayer — on DVD, one thought came to mind: MARATHON! It'd be great: We'd stuff ourselves with junk food and become one with the couch till dawn. It would be just like…
Faux Real
Sure, you know how to paint a wall. But do you know how to paint a wall so that it looks like a wall painted to look like Venetian marble? Well, with some really expensive paint (albeit cheap compared to a slab of Venetian marble) and some step-by-step coaching, you can. At least that's the…
Rollin’
The sun might be hot, but the pavement is damn near sweltering at the southernmost tip of the Pinellas trail. Here, practically in the shadow of the Sunshine Skyway, skaters can enjoy a winding path fringed with palmettos, live oaks, and strangler figs in all stages of growth. Lizards, egrets, herons and comical — occasionally…
Blair Witch Dreaming
OK, you’re thinkin’, “What the hell? Like there’s a movie shoot on every other block in Tampa Bay.”
Difficult listening
Adventures in new music
Heeeere, fishie fishie fishie …
It was 6:00 on a cold, dark April morning when Scott Harrell and I arrived at the Gulfport Municipal Marina. Jay Mastry was already there, along with his two unofficial crewmen — Kenny and John — as well as Kelly, a recent retiree from the St. Petersburg Times, and Aspen, who I think was Kenny's…
Soak ’em, Dano
Nothing brings back those carefree summer days of youth like seeing a water balloon split and release its clear, cold payload all over the head and face of a friend you're secretly pissed at. Water balloon fights are a great way to re-create those long-gone days when there was nowhere you had to be, and…
Fun Springs Eternal
Sometimes you just don't want to go to the beach. The red tide may have just lined up its stinky casualties along the shore, or dazed, sunburned tourists are clogging the roads — or you're just in the mood for something different, something cooler. If so, make a mad splash for the Lithia Springs watering…
Green Scene
Summer's not the best time to exercise your green thumb unless you particularly enjoy sweating to near-drowning proportions or passing out from heat stroke in the compost heap. Summer is, however, the best time to plan your gardening and landscaping activities for the rest of the year. If you do it right this summer, you…
The Nine Rings of Summer
Traversing the beach from hell
Bounce It
As a 34-year-old woman not in a maternal role, I've spent many years playing spectator to the game of child appeasement. Stress-addled parents everywhere are racking up huge credit card balances to throw growingly elaborate kiddy soirees. But one expensive party trick is pretty damn fun for both the little ones and adults, the inflatable…
Fly By
You've zipped by it on your way to Disney or Universal. It's about halfway between Tampa and Orlando, just minutes off I-4, and you should consider detouring there one of these days. Fantasy of Flight touts itself as "the world's greatest aircraft collection." It would be hard to imagine a better one. In a voluminous…
Freebie
Free State
Shake It Up, Baby
To learn to belly dance is to throw away your Western body. It is to understand the body as a collection of small poetic movements that begin from a starting position of gently bent knees. To learn belly dance is an act of self-forgiveness and a commitment to small movements that make a big impact.…
Scratch the Itch
A trusty reporter’s lusty junket
Walk on the Mild Side
When was the last time you checked out an area gallery? Ages, we'd reckon. It's not exactly easy to support local artists. A lot of galleries are closed on the weekends — time we reserve for catching up on chores and running errands anyway — and many gallery owners seem to enjoy the same 9-to-5…
Genteel Bushwhacking
In the early '90s, Sunken Gardens was one of those tourist attractions that had fallen on hard times. Though it was not a big draw, there was an endearing chaos about the place that gave it a particular brand of weird kitsch. For instance, you could enter a large, screened-in aviary and walk amongst all…
Slalom Celebrity-Spotting
Here's something you maybe didn't know: Water skiing was invented in 1922 when a daredevil named Ralph Samuelson tethered some boards to his feet and had a plane pull him along Lake Pepin in Minnesota. Nowadays, water skiing is mostly known as a recreational sport, but plenty of athletes have distinguished themselves in competitions that…
Heart of Darkness
Keeping the fury at bay
Small Victories
Keeping your pride in an imperfect world
Blaze a Concrete Trail
When most folks first hear the phrase urban mountain biking, they tend to scoff, "There aren't any mountains to ride around here." True, we live in an area where most commuters think of sea level not as a theoretical plane but as something that looks pretty on the drive home. But the elevations in topography…
Ridin’ the Rails
Trains, while not the swiftest mode of mass transit, are damn cool. Maybe it's because the sound and motion of a locomotive bring to mind older days and slower ways. Maybe it's the fact that trains can't make a 90-degree turn, yet still manage to get you from place to place. Or maybe it's the…
Eat bugs, win valuable prizes!
The post-Jackass Fox game show's feats of strength, endurance and intestinal fortitude have brought out the fourth grader in all of us. Is it really any surprise that the program's biggest thrillers are the segments that involve eating, touching or bathing in something nasty? Oh, sure, it's exhilarating to watch blindfolded skyscraper-climbing and people jumping…
Envy Me
Getting ahead of the Joneses
Don’t Panic
Your war questions Answered
7 Deadly Sins of Summer
Summer Guide ’03
Political Whore
Stay Tuned When I was a kid, summer Saturday nights were family nights. My father would put a chuck roast on the grill. Mama stayed in the kitchen to make the rest of supper, while my younger sister and brother settled down in the Florida room to watch TV. I stayed outside with my father,…
On the Rocks
The secrets of sultry sangria
Good Paddling
A guide to canoeing and kayaking trips in Central Florida
Funny Running Into You Again
By suggesting stalking as a summer activity, I do not (repeat: not) mean to encourage borderline sociopaths and weirdoes who can't take a hint when a girl tells them to get lost. It's to encourage cute romantic goofballs who're trying to get some crush to take an active interest. Being breezy basically means capriciously blowing…
Soul Roll
Picture, if you will, squiggly multicolored lights and bodies pop 'n' locking in syncopation to the beat. Rows of dancers performing the same routines perfected in late-1970s schoolyards. Fashionable men and women, both young and old, making a steady groove in reverse look easy. Speed skaters forming invisible braids as they pump up and down,…
Time Machine
Most tourists visiting Ybor are sweetly oblivious to the historical charms of the town, largely because said charms are either being vomited on by drunken students or having the vomit cleaned from them. For those willing to put in a little footwork, however, there is at least half a day's worth of entertainment to be…
Live, From New York
It’s Angela Bond
